SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Leofwine_draca THE GRAND DUEL is a typical entry in the spagwest genre. With a script by Ernesto Gastaldi, Italy's hardest-working scriptwriter of the period, and direction from Giancarlo Santi, who worked as assistant director on THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, it has brilliant credentials behind it as well as a cast of some of the genre's heaviest hitters. It could have quite easily been a classic and parts of it are – the haunting music and theme that plays repeatedly throughout the movie manages to out-do Morricone and is possibly my favourite spaghetti western score; Tarantino must have liked it too, because he used it in KILL BILL. However, THE GRAND DUEL loses something because of its focus on outrageous comedy and the kind of bumbling antics that Bud Spencer became associated with. If it had stayed deadly serious throughout, I imagine that this would be a much revered film today.Instead it's merely a quite good western, sometimes very good, sometimes awful. The stunt team is certainly spot on, although I could have done without the see-saw bit at the beginning where a guy is propelled into the air like something out of a cartoon. The action scenes are well handled and the final duel even manages to approach the ending of THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY in terms of quality, with superb accompanying music and decent camera-work. Essentially, though, what makes this more than watchable is the leading presence of Lee Van Cleef, appearing exactly the same as he did in FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE and giving another stern performance with his acting for the most part in his eyes – hands down Van Cleef is my favourite spagwest actor and he hasn't disappointed me yet.Van Cleef is given some good support, especially from the likes of regular German bad guy Horst Frank and newcomer Peter O'Brien, who only acted in this one film before disappearing off the face of the earth (he looks uncannily like Ray Lovelock in THE LIVING DEAD AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE). The big and bloated Jess Hahn is also around for comic relief, although he's so badly dubbed that I dreaded him popping up on screen, while Klaus Grunberg has a ball as a homosexual villain and Marc Mazza's bald head steals much of the film. Also present is Dominique Darel, a very attractive leading lady who died at the tender age of 28, six years after this film was released. Italian cinema lost a true beauty with her passing.

ironhorse_iv Never consider a gun empty and never think that Spaghetti Westerns ran out of idea bullets. It's never empty of a good story, even if it's presented in a lousy matter. Yes, this movie is deprived of historical accuracies, strange anachronisms and filled with clichés like one kill shots, but it's still worth watching if you like the genre. This film doesn't feature a lot of originality in it, so it's somewhat empty. Director Giancarlo Santi create this film, after years of being assistant-director to Sergio Leone and Giulio Petroni. The Grand Duel might not live up to Sergio Leone's films, but at least it's not the worst. There is a bit of pretentious and silliest in this film. The film starts out with an ex-sheriff name Clayton (Lee Van Cleef) arrived by stage coach, to find out that an escape convict, Phillip Vermeer (Alberto Dentice AKA Peter O'Brien) is hiding out in his town. He is wanted for murdering a local patriarch and even so persecuted by a group of bounty hunters, paid by the patriarch's sons, the Saxons. Clayton believes that Vermeer is innocent, and wants to prove it. The action is well-executed, but way too cheesy. There is a scene where Vermeer shot a man off a building where the man's body fell on a wagon, that slingshot Vermeer over a building, while doing a somersault shot another man from the other side of the room. Yes, totally outlandish acrobatic feats. There are odd scenes, where Vermeer seem dead, and somehow these bounty hunters had no idea to check if he was really dead. Come on, movie! Do you think we're that dumb? At less, the elaborated striptease scene that he had to do, didn't make it to any known final cut of the movie. I don't want to see his hairy nude body around. The only good part about the film is that film turn into a murder mystery. Lee Van Cleef has more a reason to be there and more to do. Half of the time, his character seem bored, and lazy. The final twist, although a bit obvious, is told in a series of flashbacks, shot in de-saturated, heavily filtered colors. It's get really annoying, as the colors change throughout the flashbacks. I would rather those scenes in black and white. It does looks better. The Saxon Brothers are particularly well-cast; and my favorite characters in this film. There is David Saxon (Horst Frank) who plays both the patriarch and his oldest son, a cunning, knowing man with political ambitions, who bides his time; then the middle child, Sheriff Eli Saxon (Marc Mazza) who is a simple and impatient man of action, and then the youngest brother, Adam Saxon (Klaus Grünberg) who steals the movie with his portrayal of a homosexual maniac who kills an entire community of Dutch immigrants just for fun, in a scene so over the top it will leave you cringing. I love how he plays with his scarf all the time, and his face rippled with zits. I love how nearly all the brothers wear white suits. I love how Adam putt on white gloves before executing a defenseless old man, so that it doesn't dirty his hands. Very sinister. The camera angles and shots are just too close or too far away. I can barely see what it is going on. There are scenes with both of them talking to each other, but the other man is not in the shot. I think the main reason why people might remember this movie is because of the score. Director Quentin Tarantino used a part of it for 2003's Kill Bill. This score is attributed to both Luis Bacalov and Sergio Bardotti, but Bacalov sustains he wrote all compositions. According to O'Brien, the music played over the end credits was written by the De Angelis brothers. Edda Dell Orso voice is Italy's greatest treasure, what a voice! She is just amazing in all the work she has done with the great Ennio Morricone and Luis Bacalov. This piece of music in the film is so strong and primitive, you can see the big blue sky, and feel the scorching sun, as sand grates against your pupils. Your eyes squint, sweat trickles down your trigger hand, the whooshing wind taunts your ears and your mind with the gravity of your own mortality. You stare down the would be killer. The music fits in with the final duel in the film. The movie can be found in anything, do to it, being in the public domain. I found my copy on 5 dollar bin at Wal-Mart. The quality copies are below any acceptable standards. The audio is awful. Lot of cackle, crackle noises. The dubbing to English is pretty odd in a way as they left in Italian and Croatian languages without sub-titles. The film footage is full of scratches and blemishes. The 'bloody hand print' shot present in the US trailer is missing from most versions of the US copies. You can find the film on the internet if you want to. The movie has different titles in some recopies and prints out there. In the United States, the film is known as Grand Duel, Storm Rider, the Loner, and the Big Showdown. In the U.K, it's known as Hell's Fighters. Plus, to let you know, Grand Duel is not Big Gundown like some critics say. I watched the Big Gundown version and it's not the same movie. So heads up about that. So check out the film, if not, there is a pretty cool game of Checkers, you can play with glasses of whiskey that I have learned from the film.

JohnWelles "The Grand Duel" (1972), directed by Giancarlo Santi, is a fun Spaghetti Western that is also one of Quentin Tarantino's favourite film's (he uses the music by Luis Bacalov in "Kill Bill"). The screenplay is not overly complex that has at least one quite surprising twist: Lee Van Cleef plays an ex-lawman called Clayton who protects Newman (Peter O'Brien) from a false murder rap. In trying to find the real killers, he makes enemies of the powerful Saxon Clan. This, of course, ends in the titular confrontation that takes place in a series of Corrals and looks very, very good. It's not as prolonged as Sergio Leone' showdowns, but it is still really quite tense. The score is tuneful, the acting is passable, although Van Cleef and Klaus Grünberg are honourable exceptions and the direction is very confidant, surprising when you lean that this was Santi's only Western (but he was Leone's assistant director on "Duck, You Sucker!" [1971]).

Charles Delacroix I read the other comments previous to mine, and won't add to what's already been said, except to say that I really thought there were some remarkable features here.For example, there's the device of panning a shot from point A to point B. I'm sure there's a technical term for this kind of shot, but I'm no professional, and don't know what it is. But what seemed to me unusual was the very smooth, automatic auto-timing of the transition. Say looking at Clayton for a few long seconds; then as if someone flips a switch, the camera looks from Clayton to Wermeer, traveling at a fixed rate of speed; and upon arriving at Wermeer, the camera proceeds to look at Wermeer for several long seconds.There were some strange anachronisms. The hair styles seemed very much out of 1970s era. Some of the strangest "western" headgear I've ever seen were in evidence. These chapeaux looked more like something from the Mardi Gras of New Orleans or the Carnivale of Milano than any Western story. Likewise, the almost Gucci-esquire look of the attire of Adam Saxon.Some very "spaghetti western" style over-the-top grittiness. So in the opening scene, the tall, tall, tall rock. Then we have Lee Van Cleef playing Clayton in a black, black Western outfit in stark contrast to the white outfits of the Saxons. Then we have this strange contraption involving a gun booby-trap set up to blow up their carriage on opening the door near Silver Bell. I loved the game of checkers played with full shot glasses that the players drank whenever they "jumped" someone. Then the room Clayton stays in, full of bullet holes in the walls. When he asks the proprietress if he could have another room, she says there are three kinds of rooms there: "rooms with women in them; rooms for card-games; and this one is for shooting bullets in." Nuff said, right? I loved the final scene ... sort of a Spaghetti Western version of the Shootout at the OK Corral. The love of the grotesque - such as Adam Saxon's pock-marked face - he is sardonically called "Pocksy" at one point. The typical spaghetti western tongue-in-cheek humor is present in such bits, and throughout the movie.All in all, if you like spaghetti westerns, please do yourself a favor, get this one on DVD, and enjoy! Charles Delacroix